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Summary OCR Classical Civilisation A Level: Notes on Aristophanes' Frogs $14.05   Add to cart

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Summary OCR Classical Civilisation A Level: Notes on Aristophanes' Frogs

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COMEDY THEMES
SCHOLARSHIP: DEATH & AFTERLIFE
The Representation and Satire of Tragedy
CHARACTERS: Aeschylus, Euripides, Dionysus
Comedy is interested in tragedy:
 Tragedy was central to Athenian life
 Some of Aristophanes' other plays include parody of tragedy - Women at the Thes-
mophoria presents the women of Athens secretly plotting against Euripides.

 Frogs – the plot is dominated by:
o The personalities of the individual tragedians.
 See 1.2 tragedy notes & satirising tragedians
 E presented as rejecting of the Gods with slippery arguments that ap-
peal to the masses ‘when E came down he began to show off to the
villians and muggers.
o The idea that tragic poetry can save Athens.
 It begins with Dionysus deciding to go to Hades to recover a tragic
playwright for personal reasons.
 He tells Heracles that he is pining for the work of Euripides,
since the tragedians left in Athens are inferior
 ‘a craving consumes me – for Euripides’
 At the end of the play, however, when unable to determine which
playwright is better, Dionysus reveals that there is another factor that
will influence his decision ‘I came down for a poet. Why? So that the
city could be saved and put on plays.’

Tragedy as a civic function is explored

 The right playwright will save Athens from the crisis that is engulfing her.
 Dionysus expands upon this by asking both tragedians for political advice – about Al-
cibiades and how to save the city
o Ancient poetry should be didactic - aim was to offer moral guidance and
make them better citizens.
o ‘why should we admire a poet’ ‘because we make people in our cities better’

 Diff views on tragedies role:
o Euripides states that a tragedian should be admired 'because we make
people in our cities better'
o Whereas, Aeschylus comments 'Children have teachers to instruct them,
young men have poets’

 They agree on the educational importance of tragedy
 But disagree on how this should be fulfilled:

, o SCHOLAR Ruffel: the tragedians disagree violently on how they are to make
citizens better | A believes characters should be models of good behaviour or
the audience, E believes tragedy should be o examine conventional wisdom,
to scrutinize and provoke.
o Aeschylus: claims that Euripides has corrupted Athenian morals by presenting
wicked deeds on stage, and argues that a tragedian should conceal bad beha-
viour, not encourage it by presenting it on stage i.e. Phaedra and Stheneboea
(see women below).
 Half a century later we find the same argument used by Plato in his
Republic - he criticises all the tragedians (including Aeschylus) for pro-
moting immoral behaviour.
o SCHOLAR Dover: A is said to have moral characters and E has immoral BUT in
reality, they both have these. Just in E he makes us sympathise with those
who behaved badly i.e, Medea.

Satirising the tragedians:
 The 3 tragedians:
o Frogs parodies the style of the individual tragedians:
 This assumes a high level of knowledge on the part of Aristophanes'
audience: indeed the chorus encourage Aeschylus and Euripides not
to worry that the audience will not follow – ‘for the audience, at any
rate, is smart’
 SCHOLAR Griffith: states that the audience were experienced theatre-
goers and used to making judgements about the relative merits of
competing tragedies.

o The focus on Aeschylus and Euripides also demonstrates how the formation
of the three great tragedians was already well underway in Aristophanes' life-
time.
 Sophocles probably died shortly before Frogs was first performed, and
so too late to be fully incorporated into the script.
o His insistence in Frogs that no playwrights other than Aeschylus, Sophocles
and Euripides wrote anything of merit itself probably played a role in the ex-
clusive focus on these playwrights, and the loss of the works by others.

o Aristophanes’ presentation needs to be viewed with scepticism, especially
since the personalities of Aeschylus and Euripides are derived from stereo-
types about their work.
 1.2 tragedy has their personalities.
 SCHOLAR Ruffel: ‘both these positions are travesties of what we know
of each poet’

 Other tragedians mentioned:
o Dionysus makes it clear that these are the only playwrights worth considering
truly great.

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